Page 32 - Cultures and Organizations

The Rules of the Social Game 17

Ideologies as Group Markers

If you could make three statements about yourself, what would you say?
Would you mention individual characteristics such as the color of your
eyes, your favorite sports or food, or the like? More likely, you would men-
tion group membership attributes such as gender, profession, nationality,

religion, which sports team you favor, and which role you fulfill in society.
Even if you mention only personal attributes, they are probably attributes
that are esteemed among people who matter to you. Much of people’s social
activity is spent explicitly maintaining symbolic group ties. Most people
most of the time are busy being good members of the groups to which they
belong. They show it in their clothes, their movements, their way of speak-
ing, their possessions, and their jobs. They spend time with these groups in
rituals that strengthen them: talking, laughing, playing, touching, singing,

fighting playfully, eating, drinking, and so forth. These activities all aim at
reinforcing the moral circle. On a conscious level, however, few would look
at their daily lives that way. Instead, people describe what they do in terms

of its ritual justification. They go to work, they make strategic plans, they
do team building, they attend church services, they serve their country,
they celebrate a special occasion.
So, most people see differences where an anthropologist or a biologist
sees similarities. These differences are important because we are continu-

ally defining and redefining who belongs to what group and in what role.
Creating groups and changing membership is one of people’s core activi-
ties in life. Every society has different rules about how bad it is to leave
one group and to join another. It is not surprising that many groups have
strong prohibitions against leaving, sometimes backed up by severe penal-
ties. It is never easy to be of a minority religion, for instance, whatever the
country one lives in. The degree to which groups penalize deviant sym-

bolic identities and behaviors differs enormously across societies, as shall
be discussed in subsequent chapters.

Layers of Culture

In the course of our lives, each of us has to find his or her place in many

moral circles. Every group or category of people carries a set of com-
mon mental programs that constitutes its culture. As almost everyone